The Black Lizard Big Book of Pulps
- Автор: Anderson Lars, Barr Randolph
- Год: 2007
- Язык: английский
- Год: Vintage Books
- ISBN: 978-0-307-28048-0
- Жанр: Криминальные детективы
Электронная книга - «The Black Lizard Big Book of Pulps». Краткое содержание книги:
Weighing in at over a thousand pages, containing over forty-seven stories and two novels, this book is big baby, bigger and more powerful than a freight train — a bullet couldn’t pass through it. Here are the best stories and every major writer who ever appeared in celebrated Pulps like Black Mask, Dime Detective, Detective Fiction Weekly, and more. These are the classic tales that created the genre and gave birth to hard-hitting detectives who smoke criminals like packs of cigarettes; sultry dames whose looks are as lethal as a dagger to the chest; and gin-soaked hideouts where conversations are just preludes to murder. This is crime fiction at its gritty best.
“Maybe you’ll follow orders now, eh, kid?” he asked. He wheezed from the deep chair and balanced his fat body on his feet. “Better forget your yen for that pretty boy, Morton,” he added, “an’ play along with the guy who’s been right with you. Get me, frail?”
The girl nodded. Finally she regained her composure.
“I’ll frame him, Blackie,” she said with visible effort. “I’ll frame him if you promise me you’ll get that moll, too. My life isn’t worth a nickel if that girl ever recognized me. Don’t worry. I’ll play a hundred per cent with you now!”
“Atta baby, Vi,” answered Blackie, and he pulled on his coat with the help of the girl and waddled from the room. His soul was at peace as he waited for the elevator which took him to the street, and, as he rode away in his armored car with his gat bodyguard, Blackie Rango saw himself seated soon on the throne of gangdom. With the menacing Mort Mitchell and his mob out of the way, none in the underworld would dare dispute his leadership.
“An’ that there Vi,” Blackie said, half audibly, as he mused, “I’ll keep her around. She’s pretty easy on the eyes — an’ besides, I got the deadwood on her. She oughta pay dividends!”
Despite her valiant efforts to appear natural Vi Carroll plainly was suffering from some repressed emotion that night. Her companions in the gay party which went to the ultra-fashionable Club Meta to see the new floor show and hear the reigning tenor noticed it. They joked with her; in mock solicitude they inquired gravely whether her dampened spirits were due to Wall Street, to a love affair, to the loss of a dear friend, or what else?
Then the floor show engaged their attention and she had a moment’s peace from their banter. She fingered the thin-stemmed glass before her and looked through the crowd anxiously. She was looking for the handsome Mort Mitchell, the striking-looking, mysterious Mort, who held such a subtle attraction for her and the man she was pledged to frame. Her usual complacency was gone when she saw his tall figure appear.
She was agitated when he bowed to her and exchanged a greeting.
“Let’s dance,” she said as the orchestra struck up a number. “I’m blue tonight, I’m depressed.”
They danced silently for a round of the small floor and then the girl said abruptly:
“Morton, I want to talk to you. Let’s walk out on the balcony, so we can be alone. Try to cheer me up. I feel morbid, almost afraid.”
The mob chieftain laughed. What in the world, he thought, could this glorious girl, with wealth, social position, and beauty, have to worry about? They leaned over the balcony rail together, looking out on the lights of the city. When Vivian spoke, she tried to conceal the eagerness in her voice.
“I’ve been hearing things about you, Morton,” she said.
“What were they, Vi?”
“You’re the man of mystery to all my friends,” she went on. “They like you, but they do not know your antecedents — and, as a matter of fact, neither do I.”
“Just a fellow lucky to have a little bit of money,” Mort said, “and a business which takes care of itself. I’m a consulting engineer, if you must know, but my duties are not confining.”
Vi turned to him with an air of frankness.
“I’m not questioning you, Mort,” she said, “and I don’t care what the crowd thinks of you. But—” She hesitated, and then went on with a burst of apparent frankness. “Mort, who is the beautiful girl, the beautiful black-eyed girl I’ve heard is in your company pretty often? Frankly, I’m a bit jealous of her.”
Mort laughed heartily.
“You jealous?” she scoffed. “I just wish you cared enough about me to be jealous. The other girl? Just an employee, Vi, a girl who has worked in my office, an efficient stenographer, that’s all. We have no social contact. She’s been in my car, of course, but only in the line of her duties.”
“Who is she, Morton?”
“Just a girl who came here from Chicago a year ago. I really don’t know her first name. Miss Wynn, that’s all the name I know.”
Vi’s voice was strained as she persisted in her questioning.
“This girl, Morton. Has she particularly large, black eyes?”
“Yes, she has.”
“Did she—” Vi hesitated, then she went on, speaking almost desperately. “Morton, did this girl ever have an accident? Was she ever hurt badly, was—?”
Mort looked at the agitated Vivian curiously.
“Why all this interest in an office working girl, Vi?” he asked. “I don’t know anything more about her. How would I know whether she ever suffered injury?”
“Forgive me, Morton,” said Vi. “I’ve heard this girl described, and — and the description fitted a girl I once knew in the West. I thought, maybe—” She broke off with a laugh, a relieved laugh. “Let’s forget about the girl and rejoin the party,” and she led the way back to the dining-room with the attentive, but slightly puzzled, Mort behind her.
From that moment Vi Carroll’s manner changed. Her spirits rose, she laughed gayly, she seemed determined to still any disquieting thoughts with an excess of gaiety. “It can’t be the same girl,” she said to herself as she tripped through a dance with Mort. “Only a chance in a million it’s the same, and my luck is good.”
Mort left the party comparatively early, for he had troublesome things on his mind. That matter, that vital matter of Blackie Rango, wouldn’t be brushed from his recollection by the bright lights and gaiety. He left before the party broke up, managing a few whispered words again with Vi before leaving.
“Shall I see you tomorrow night, Vi?” he asked anxiously.
“Tomorrow,” replied the flushed girl — “let’s see, tomorrow’s Friday. No, Morton, but I’ll see you Saturday. Tomorrow night’s the opera, you know, and I’m going with the Elberts, and then out to the island for the night.”
She smiled fondly at Mort’s disappointment and squeezed his hand tightly as he said adieu. A qualm came to her heart as she watched his tall figure moving toward the door. God, but he was a fine-looking fellow to be marked for Death! Why did he have to be the one?
Friday night and the opera, with favorites singing the principal roles and the diamond horseshoe ablaze with celebrities and color. Outside the forbidding opera house the stream of automobiles, the crowds of curious, fascinated by the jewels and scintillating frocks of society. And along the line of crawling automobiles, slowly approaching the entrance to disgorge their cargoes of dressed-up and bejeweled folks, croaked the Hag of the Opera, the bunchy figure of that wreck of a woman who whined for her alms at the automobile windows. Her slovenly body was swathed in the ground-length, dingy coat which came high on her neck, to her chin. Over her head the inevitable dirty shawl. Beneath the shawl peered the beady eyes, the gnarled sallow skin of the Hag, whining and showing the long discolored tooth, more like a fang, which reached from the front of her upper jaw down over her lower lip as she pleaded with the richly-gowned opera patrons for alms. Adding to her hideousness was a blemish — a huge, hairy mole — on her right cheek, which moved up and down as she whined.
Dirty, hideous, repulsive was the Hag of the Opera, yet she had her clientele. Women in shining automobiles shrank from her dirty extended paws, yet they besought their escorts to help her.
“Help Dolores,” the Hag cried, “help the old woman who once knew so well the plaudits of the crowd. Dolores of the Imperial ballet — I, Dolores, who danced for kings. Now I need crusts. Help me, good people.”
And, as she begged her acute ears were attuned, not for words of sympathy, but for the intimate talk inside the vehicles, the chatter about social engagements, anything that might mean an unguarded mansion, a particularly fine display of gems at some social gathering — some target for the mob’s arrows!